A man wanders the world seven years and in all that time takes neither food nor drink, and does not die — the record keeps this marvel of the body that outlives its hunger, and its witness is one of the Brothers Grimm's grimmest tales. In The Girl Without Hands (from the Household Tales, collected 1812–1857), a miller unwittingly bargains his daughter away to the devil, who forces the father to cut off her hands; the girl weeps so on the stumps that "they were quite clean", and the devil loses all power over her. A king finds her, "had silver hands made for her", and takes her to wife.

The marvel that answers to this motif comes later. When the devil's forged letters drive the innocent queen and her infant — a boy she names "Sorrowful" — into exile, the king returns from war, learns she yet lives, and vows that he "will neither eat nor drink" until he has found her. He "travelled about for seven long years", and through that whole span "he neither ate nor drank", for, the tale says plainly, "God supported him". Only when an angel leads him to her forest refuge — where, by grace, her severed hands "grew once more" — does the long fast end.

This is a wonder with a single cause: the fasting body is held up not by bread but by heaven, and no year of walking wears it down. Only the German telling is wired to served text; the record's Irish authority for the same marvel, and the wider tale-type standing behind it, wait unread. What kind of hunger is it that faith can simply switch off?